One of the best, uninterrupted time periods of the school year is typically during January and February. All routines are in place, the excitement of the holidays is behind us, and it’s full steam ahead! With that said, this January and early February show how unpredictable this time of year can be. Snowstorm after snowstorm shorten our weeks. With another storm on our doorstep, I’m hoping the weather will settle into a quieter pattern soon. We have been busy in the time we’ve had!
In math, we’ve reviewed subtraction fact strategies, time to the nearest 5 minutes, counting coins and making change with smaller amounts of money. Our next focus is adding 2 and 3 digit numbers and working through more advanced word problems. While we will eventually look at the “traditional” method of adding with regrouping, we begin by learning methods which reinforce an understanding of place value and how and why we regroup numbers using manipulatives and a technique called branching (which helps children add numbers mentally). This is followed up by learning the partial sums method. I will send a video to help you understand how these methods work. Please continue to review math facts with your child at home, as fluency is key when working with larger numbers.
I’ve re-administered reading assessments previously given in September. It’s exciting to see the progress children are making, particularly in their ability to retell what they’ve read in an organized manner. Many are making the move to chapter books. While this is exciting, it’s important to remember not all chapter books are “second-grader-friendly,” and I’m working with each child to recognize what is a just-right chapter book. If you have any questions about for your child’s reading or appropriate books, please give me a call and we can discuss it.
We are wrapping up our study of persuasive writing, nominating books for an “Adventures of the 17 Award.” Each child is choosing a book to nominate for our class award and working to convince judges using letter form. May the best book win!
The weather has been perfect for learning about animals in the Arctic and Antarctica. Each child chose an animal to research, wrote an article and created a magazine, similar to Scholastic News. We experienced first-hand how blubber keeps an animal warm using a blubber glove made with Crisco and ice cold water. Two weeks ago we also had the opportunity to videoconference with a researcher in Antarctica who is studying Adelie penguins. Life is not easy in that part of the world!
We learned about nonfiction text features and why authors and publishers use them in nonfiction. Pairs of students found examples of these features in various books and created a Pic Collage to share them. Please take a moment to check them out on our class website.
We are taking part in an online descriptive writing project called “The Monster Project.” As a participant we are matched with a class of students in another part of the country, in our case a class in Auburn, Alabama. On Friday afternoon we used Skpe to introduce ourselves to our partner class and share some information about our school and New Hampshire. It was fun to meet each other and discover the many things we have in common (with the exception of snowfall amounts).
We ended the week snowshoeing with Mrs. Lane and Ms. French. Everyone enjoyed the time outdoors learning how to snowshoe and playing some games. The time flew by and we were all disappointed when it was time to go back indoors. I’m sure with the amount of snow we have we’ll be able to do it again soon.
Stay warm!
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